After driving from Philadelphia to Minneapolis (with a stop in Fremont, Indiana) we have arrived safe and sound on Tuesday, February 19th. After a rest and some much-needed animal corraling it was time to sift through the audio detritus that will eventually make up season 2 of Jarnsaxa Rising.
It was a shame we couldn’t hang out with the cast during the time that we were there but with the readthroughs and the re-writes, there wasn’t time. We had a narrow window to record in due to conflicting schedules with the cast but we did manage to get everything done in a final 12-hour session.
Tech notes here so if this stuff bores you just skip it. I included links in the event of anyone interested in the product and my experience with it in a real-world situation. I’m not getting compensated for anything.
For the actors, I decided to have a headphone distribution system set up so they can hear themselves. I went cheap and got the Behringer Powerplay which actually did a pretty good job. I brought with me what I had in headphones (2 pairs of Sony MDR 7506’s, Sennheiser HD280, and a pair of KOSS over the ear type. I also made a quick stop at Twin Town Guitars and grabbed some 1/8″ to 1/4″ adaptors just in case.
A little plug for Sony here, if you are looking for bulletproof, great sounding headphones, get the MDR 7506. I have a pair that is over 20 years old the other is 10 and they are user serviceable so you can replace parts.
The recording space was the second floor (attic?) at the home of the director Carin Bratlie Wethern. We kept any room reverb down by utilizing blankets and pillows. I also tried to keep to the “3 to 1” rule to cut down on bleed. I was somewhat successful in this after listening to playbacks and isolating tracks.
If time permits I will occasionally post again. The work is going to be slow and tedious. Then I have to create SFX beds and music cues for 8 episodes so it may take a few months or more to get a decent product.
In six days, Vince and I are going to take A Big Risk. We’re going to get on a plane (Vince hates flying) and go to Minneapolis, Minnesota. There we’re going to hand a script to a room full of people, most of whom I haven’t met (first-draft readings take a pint of my blood), and we’re going to read it, rehearse it, record it, and make a serial podcast out of it.
This is Jarnsaxa Rising. Ancient Norse Gods use humans as pawns to battle each other. When an ancient giantess takes human form to engage in eco-terrorism, a corporate team tries to stop her, and learns who the real enemy is.
Vince testing our portable recording setup.
The script is stylistically different for me, in narrative and in craft. I’ve never written science fiction or fantasy before. Adjusting to audio drama is also new for me. Vince has done a lot of sound engineering and still experiments with it for fun. He’ll be performing all of the sound engineering and writing all of the music. We made a sketch comedy podcast episode to prove to ourselves we could do it. Now we’re getting involved with other people and going on a journey.
Carin Bratlie believed in me enough to produce Traveling Light years ago, and now we’re going to go take a leap of faith together again. She’s assembled a solid, smart cast, and she’ll be directing.
They say life is a bowl of cherries in Minneapolis.
Right now I feel like my viscera is all clenched up in the center of my chest from excitement and anxiety. I’m rewriting the big final battle of the story, and I want to make everyone proud.
So, Vince and I have been working on a podcast, and I’d love it if you’d give it 20 minutes of your time, a listen and a look-see. It’s called Radio Free Tacony. Comments and criticism are welcome.
This is not Sparks Nevada, but don’t let that stop you from dressing like this.
Need some hot fresh dance music for your Saturday night? Vince has spent the last snowy nasty cold wet afternoon weaving some hot guitar licks and classic beats for your booty-shakin’ pleasure.
One of the things which has been keeping me from going completely bonkers from seasonal affective disorder this winter has been The Thrilling Adventure Hour. It’s a classy, funny, smart, strange show, in the style of “old-time” radio drama and comedy, performed in front of a live audience, with a live band and Foley. Mainly, I listen to Sparks Nevada, Marshall On Mars and Beyond Belief, because they’re bizarre and hilarious, and Paget Brewster’s voice is like being wrapped in a silk and cashmere cocoon, filled with vodka and dipped in chocolate.
Also, Paul F. Tompkins totally wants to be best friends with us, and that’s okay too.
So, I was cleaning my writing room. The Wreck Of The Alberta and Who Is Cattle Kate? are finished (for now) and the current pair of plays I have to write this semester (pairs. why do they always come in pairs?)are still unformed, and singing along with the Sparks Nevada theme song was keeping me from feeling like this was an exercise in futility.
Within a few minutes, I heard a strumming in the next room. Vince, in his savant-like fashion, listened to the theme song (written by Eban Schletter), figured it out and taught it to himself.
So, while we’ve been trying to keep winter gloom from making us want to peel off our skin and run screaming through the icy dark streets of Philadelphia, Vince re-interpreted and re-arranged The Theme From Sparks Nevada, Marshall On Mars, in the style of The Shadows.
The colder it gets, the more my urge to bake crawls up to the surface. It’s very hard to ignore the desire to heat up one’s kitchen and make comfort food. A few winters ago, I went on a quest to make the perfect oatmeal-cranberry cookie,* and the perfect red velvet cupcake. I learned a lot, gained weight, and had fun, but I spent a lot of time eating ugly, flavorless red velvet cupcakes. I kept eating them by the dozen, dragged in by the addictive nature of complex carbohydrates, even though they tasted like chalkboard erasers. I’d eat them, wondering what went wrong in the baking process, then I’d have to pass out, then I’d wake up three hours later, and eat more of them***.
“I would definitely like a cookie, please.”
This winter, I’m trying really hard to avoid the complex carbohydrate roller coaster. But I still want to crank up the oven, warm up the kitchen, and put effort into something which will result in a tasty comforting treat for my loved ones and myself. Particularly when you write for theater, and you’re putting effort into something with no clear concept of how it will pay off, cooking can be very affirming. Making batches of cookies is ridiculous, in my opinion. Vince will only eat so many, I’m not a good enough baker to take my cookies to others, and leaving sugary carby snacks around me is like leaving heroin around Kurt Cobain.** But, I have a new tactic.
My dear friend Shelle, who blogs over at BatCookies, recommended Bob Harper’s book The Skinny Rules to me a few years ago. I haven’t followed it strictly, but I like the recipes a lot. One of his easy snack recipes is roasted sweet potatoes. Through trial and error and negotiation with my oven, I adapted his recipe to suit me. Basically, I chop up sweet potatoes into chunks, put them in a bowl, toss them with oil, garlic salt and whatever else on the spice shelf looks good, and then put them on a baking sheet lined with foil in a preheated oven at 375 for about 20-25 minutes.
Left: Sweet potatoes tossed with olive oil, Goya Adobo Light seasoning, and Indian Curry Powder. Right: Sweet potatoes, buck naked.
Harper’s recipe is lower in salt than mine, and I’m sure his oven has less heating issues than mine does, so if you’re on a weight loss trip, go get his book and read it because it’s reasonably good. Also, at this time of year, sweet potatoes are not expensive, and they’re even cheaper around Thanksgiving and Christmas. I got 5 lbs. for $4.40 a few weeks ago at my local supermarket, but my local produce vendor normally has them for 3 pounds for a dollar. If you want a warm, tasty, crisp on the outside yet soft on the inside sweet-salty-savory snack, try this.
ME: This is to a yam, it’s a sweet potato. Yams are native to Africa, whereas sweet potatoes are native to South America.
BEBE: As long as it emigrates across my tongue, down my gullet and into my belly, I don’t care where it’s from. Gimme Yam.
ME: Yams also are dark brown and hairy and can grow up to 100 pounds. So they usually don’t have them in supermarkets in the US.
BEBE: I’m brown and hairy. Quit accusing me of look-ism. All tasty treats are welcome. I have a very liberal immigration policy in Bebestumistan.
ME: So, you understand, right? It’s a sweet potato, not a-
(SNAP)
ME: Thank you for not chomping my fingers, Bebe.
BEBE: You’re welcome. Thank you for the yam.
So we have to use the word “yam.” That’s all there is to it.
I do make sweet potato treats specifically for the dogs, thanks to Thug Kitchen’s Sweet Potato Dog Treat Jerky Recipe. It occurred to me that maybe letting the dogs mooch off my garlicky, salty sweet potato chunks was probably a terrible idea, so I make them buck naked.
My friends who have kids are falling into the “baking cookies” trap as badly as I have; it’s cold, you have to entertain some bored kids; voilà, bake cookies. Teach them measuring and procedures and chemistry and science and cooking and follow it with tasty tasty sugary snacks. But, I’m wondering baking sweet potato slices or chunks could be just as entertaining. True, you don’t want to give the kids knives, but what I’m wondering is if you cut the potatoes into wide, long slices, bake them for fifteen minutes to soften them, then cut them into shapes with a cookie cutter, then put them back in the oven for another ten or 15 minutes, if that would solve the problem of the cookie trap?
Or would kids say, “Don’t fucking try to fake us out, now come across with the cookies?”
**Recomended Reading: The End of Overeating, by David A. Kessler, MD. An approachable yet scientifically sound and fascinating book about the human brain, biochemistry, and how we manipulate ourselves and each other to over-eat, keep eating, and never be fully satisfied.
Also, for what it’s worth, I love Thug Kitchen so much. There is something about those recipes that flip a switch in my brain and I get a level of satisfaction from flavor and nutrients and mouthfeel that is as deeply profound as scratching a seven-year-itch.
*** For what it’s worth: I tried a lot of different recipes for Red Velvet Cupcakes. Of the best I have ever tasted, which I did not bake, they have come from Philly Cupcake at 1132 Chestnut Street and Cookie Confidential at 5th & Gaskill. I have not tried Flying Monkey‘s red velvet cupcakes, though I have tried their other cupcakes and they are amazing and delicious.
Of the ones I have baked:
All box mixes I tried were chocolate cake dyed red. NO.
Paula Deen’s recipe was the worst. The recipe called for 1 & 1/2 cups of vegetable oil, but no butter, which seemed really odd to me. But I went ahead with it, and followed instructions. They were rubbery and sad and I hated them and myself for bringing them into this world.
Good red velvet cupcakes, apparently, are supposed to be balanced between sweet and bitter and tangy. They’re supposed to have a hint of chocolate taste to them, but they’re not supposed to be a chocolate cupcake dyed red. From what I can figure, if it’s a cake recipe which cuts no corners, but also includes unsweetened cocoa, buttermilk, baking soda and distilled vinegar (and requires that you do the vinegar-baking soda trick when you make it) you’re as close to a true red velvet cake recipe as anyone south of the Mason-Dixon line will let a Yankee. I think the popularity is due to the challenge and controversy of how to properly make one, and how easy it is to get it wrong.
And now, as you can see, I’m still completely obsessed, and will have to content myself with roasted sweet potato chunks.
After over a year of [almost] weekly blog posts, Vince and I took a few months off. This wasn’t on purpose. We had some other things suck up our time and energy, most notably:
1) Quitting smoking. I’m sure there will be a future, detailed post about this work in progress. Suffice it to say that it took up most of our head space starting in mid-December. In the meantime, please know that we are not converted and ideologically we are still smoker-positive. However, the Fine Turkish Turkweed, she is an expensive and harsh mistress. So, Nicorette is my new constant companion, and for the month of February, Vince made sure we were well stocked with Cherry Tootsie Pops.
2) The Conshohocken Curve. Whether it’s where you tap your brakes or where you break free of the herd, that phrase is embedded in the minds of everyone who moves within and without the Greater Philadelphia region from years of radio traffic reports. When it floated to the top of Scott Rogers’ brain one day, Vince knew this had to be the name of the band they’d been working on with Alan Kaufman. For now, the band is practicing and getting ready to record demos, with drummer Mark Sugarman. Keep your cool cat clothes pressed and on a hanger at the front of the closet, because the rock, blues and folk-rock dance pop express train is getting ready to roll.
(How was that? How’d that sound? Do I still have the marketing-copy chops? Huh? Huh? Do I? Huh?)
3) This semester is such a switch for me that it feels like my head is on backwards. I’m taking courses that are all about what things look like and how that affects society, and/or how society affects what things looks like. So, I have to know the difference between talud-tablero and duo gong, ruquhn and rubakha, Whistler, Tanner and O’Keefe. All of this falls into the “things that sound dirty but aren’t” category, and not in a good way. I’ve been learning the craft of storytelling for a year and a half, now I have to use all the “analyze, memorize and identify” parts of my brain. so, yeah, just when the learning curve started to make sense, it flipped.
Worry not, internet. Your favorite writer-musician power couple of love has been doing just fine. Amanda Palmer is in Australia recording a new album and Neil Gaiman is in an undisclosed location writing a new book. In the meantime, you have Lindsay and Vince.
6630 Productions 